Methodological contribution to the integrated study of European Palaeolithic rock art: The issue of the audience and the perceptibility of Roc-aux-Sorciers rock art (Angles-sur-l'Anglin, France)

Abstract This paper focuses on the issue of the audience of European Palaeolithic rock art, with a special interest given to the question of perceptibility. The carved, engraved and painted rock art from the Middle Magdalenian occupations of Roc-aux-Sorciers rock shelter (Angles-sur-l'Anglin, France) constitutes our case-study. Our methodology is based on an integrated approach of the rock art that combines an internal analysis of some intrinsic characteristics (techniques, dimensions, shapes, composition) and a study of the physical context it sets in. We particularly consider the characteristics of the environment of the site, its location in the landscape and its accommodation capacity. Thus are examined the visibility of the site and the decorated surfaces as well as the visibility and lisibility of the parietal carvings and engravings. We use GIS analysis processes to determine the view sheds and test several quantitative approaches taken from optics and visual ergonomics to calculate visibility and lisibility distances. If some analytical tools prove to be appropriate and relevant, the application of the formulas from the optical field needs to be qualified for some results are clearly overestimated. This preliminary research brings interesting results although supplementary analytical criteria will be necessary to consolidate them (lightning, painted register, perception of relief forms). Roc-aux-Sorciers was a site with a natural collective vocation given its high accommodation capacity from 75 to 100 people, easily accessible and highly visible in the landscape on a wide area. This study shows two strategies of visibility of the rock art, towards the outside or the inside of the site depending on whether the observer looks at the decorated back wall or ceiling. Moreover, two levels of visibility and legibility separate on the one hand the monumental carved frieze dedicated to a large and public audience, on the other hand the register of small fine engravings which discovery is more individual. Thus this study yields evidence of four levels of perceptibility of Roc-aux-Sorciers rock art: from an area of 1 km around the site until a close observation of the walls which can meet different audiences and hence recover diverse uses of the parietal iconography for these populations. Beyond, it is part of the territorial structuring and mobility of these people that could to be organized around these elements of distant visibility and perception of this decorated site which the Magdalenians were aware of.